More than a dozen people planted around 1,500 seedlings on the day, with 4,000 seedlings being planted before the project has been completed.

"It was really a fulfilling day,” said PEC Executive Vice President Patrick Starr. “Not only did we plant trees together, we enjoyed working together to solve one of Pennsylvania’s most intractable pollution problems. I was so gratified that more than a dozen volunteers pitched in for the cause—even our bus driver decided to plant trees!”

A four-acre segment of the state forest in Columbia County that’s been affected by the remnants of mining activity was targeted by the volunteers in an effort to improve the area’s water quality and restore lost forest habitat.

Pennsylvania has more miles of streams affected by mine land drainage than any other state, with more than 15,000 degraded acres needing to be reforested.

The volunteers, drawing from Columbia, Northumberland and Berks counties and also including members of the Shamokin Creek Restoration Alliance, spent the day planting seedlings such as sumac, scrub oak, pitch pine and aspens to restore a forest on a mine land site affecting tributaries of the Shamokin Creek.

A forester from the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement demonstrated how to plant the young trees.

One of the volunteers, John Dawes, is the executive director of the Foundation for PA Watersheds, which has been working with a wide variety of environmental groups, government agencies, volunteer organizations and others to improve the health of watersheds and forests affected by past mining activity in Pennsylvania.

While other causes of stream degradation pose risks to Pennsylvania’s watersheds, abandoned mine drainage actually is the largest threat to the state’s stream health.

Dawes has supervised small grants to over 350 environmental and watershed associations throughout the state since the Foundation for Pennsylvania Watersheds was founded in 1994.

The intent is to provide seed money to allow a local group to access agency funding through DCNR, DEP, the federal Office of Surface Mining, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

This has resulted in over $159 million in project cost. The majority of this small grants budget is for abandoned mine reclamation.

In 2014, Dawes received the ECHO Award from the U.S. Dept. Of Interior’s Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement.

Named to signify the most common principles behind the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA)—Environment, Community, Humanity and Ownership—the award is given to recognize individuals for their contributions to support and strengthen SMCRA, the law designed to protect people and the environment from the adverse effects of coal mining while providing for the nation’s energy needs.

“The problem of historic abandoned mine lands is the worst environmental scar on the landscape of Pennsylvania,” said Dawes. “The planting of scarred mine lands is not rocket science. It is a matter of adding soil amendments and ripping the surface to allow trees to thrive—including the blight resistant American Chestnut trees which represent decades of selective breeding.

“Communities near these sites have depressed land and housing values in the 44 out of 67 counties affected by abandoned mine lands. Reclamation means jobs—truck hauling, heavy machinery deployment, tree planting, nursery propagation, etc. Philanthropy is willing to partner with the state and the federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement to get this job done!”

Pennsylvania has over 200,000 acres of abandoned mine lands. Improving the health of these areas is an important goal of DCNR and the Department of Environmental Protection. DEP’s Forestry Reclamation Approach (FRA) involves the planting of higher quality trees, minimum compaction of the reclaimed ground, the use of native as well as non-competitive ground covers and proper tree planting techniques.

On some plots—like the ones in Sproul State Forest [Clinton and Centre counties] where they’ve been doing AML reclamation projects since the early 1990s and have reclaimed around 100 acres—a mix of hardwoods and conifers are used.

Species include oaks, white pine, red pine, spruce and aspen. DCNR is committed to offering technical assistance in reclamation projects on private lands throughout the state in addition to hosting tree plantings on state forest land.

“DCNR, through the Bureau of Forestry, has a deep history in taking spoiled lands—whether it was through over-harvesting of timber or unreclaimed mine lands—and returning them to productive forest lands,” said DCNR Deputy Secretary for Parks and Forestry John Norbeck. “In this case, we are working with our partner organizations to return the land to a healthy state and cleaning up the waterways.”

This particular planting was a first for PEC as a partner in the Appalachian Regional Reforestation Initiative and in partnership with DCNR’s Bureau of Forestry, DEP, the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, and Green Forests Work.

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About Me

This Blog is a companion to www.PaEnvironmentDigest.com, the weekly online newsletter published by Crisci Associates, Harrisburg, PA.
I can be contacted at 717-576-0420 or by sending email to: DHess@CrisciAssociates.com.
I served as Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection from 2001 to 2003, Executive Deputy at DEP from 1995 to 2001, as staff to the PA Senate Environmental Committee and various positions in the former Department of Environmental Resources, working on environmental issues for over 40 years.